How is this film so underrated?

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My dad took me to see The Omega Man when it first came out... I remember thinking it was a great movie, and to this day I think it was a pretty good movie. While I don't recall it being a blockbuster, it WAS a popular movie with the sci-fi crowd at the time. Obviously it pales in comparison to other movies around that time period like 2001: A Space Odyssey, but for a mainstream Hollywood action flick it was pretty OK.

IMO, this film is rated perfectly here on IMDB (6.5). It's a great idea, with OK execution, and the most horrendously inappropriate soundtrack ever - especially the final scene where Heston dies. Basically, the film could've been better, could've been worse...

I saw the movie in France, just upon its release, and many times later on television. It remains one of my favourite SF pictures.
I don't know much about the US film critics at that period, but in France, this period was actually the after-68 era : bad movies were considered to be a combination of convincing plot + strong action + science fiction. In other words : movies for the nerds. Omega man exactly fits in that category.
40 years later, it remains one of the best science-fiction movies ever made, and one of Charlton Heston's best performances. I didn't like Mr Heston's position as NRA president, but he remains one the best action-movie actor of all times, just after Harrison Ford. I am a Star Wars fan, and I also love 2001, and Planet of the Apes (the "original" Heston movie), and Soylent Green. Omega man is typically the kind of movie that should have been made in the 21st century, in the place of the "I am a legend - Will Smith" version. It would have received a much better success !
I am also a SF-books fan, I liked the Matheson original book very much, and I don't agree with the idea that any movie should be the strict adaptation of a book. Hopefully, the art of writing a book is different of film-making.

I was only 9 years of age and my parents went to see this film at the very last drive-in theater. It was a waste land not unlike many of the scenes and sets of the film. To further immerse me into a overly impressionable fugue state it began with the flashback of Hestons work as a chemist who manages to develop a synthesized serum/antidote to the albinism/SP99 virulent cancer that was release during a militarized cold war armageddon-like germ warfare.It disturbed me because even in the early 70's Russo-American tension seemed to cut the damned ozone so I was watching a end of mankind (Soylent Green, Planet of the apes)as we know it film in a desolate soon to be eradicated drive-in .I liked the opening of 28 Days Later wherein Cillian Murphy leaves the hospital and strolls about London. Heston drives about with a gas guzzler that probably manages 8 miles per gallon and weighs several tons more than our little hybrids.Im thinking heston was in the big apple but it may have been chicago? Nevertheless desolation avenues do abound .I wonder just how newspapers they littered the streets with and A HONKEY PARADISE is something to covet, not? And this line delivered with as much zeal as Pam Grier Rosalind Cash a very attractive young fox tells Heston once on the bike IF YOU THINK YOU GOTTA PLAY JAMES BOND THEN I'LL JUST BUSS YOUR ASS.ALL OF THESE ELEMENTS COALESCED TOGETHER AND ON IMPACT IMPRESSED UPON ME AND TREMENDOUS CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE FOR MY PARANOID SPONGE OF A MIND/.

So, what the HELL is up with some administrator deleting all of someone's posts. I have NO bloody idea now of what these conversations consisted of. Looking at the replies, it fully appears to be a friendly conversation, so why the HELL did some administrator rip through here and obviously take out all of a particular person'a posts...?

With no apparent bad reactions to whatever was said, that sure does look TOTALLY stupid!



I have over 4000 films, many of them very rare and OOP. I LOVE to trade. PLEASE ASK!

I saw it in the theatre in 1971. I lived in a little town in Wisconsin and I was a freshman in high school, so I wasn't aware of how succesful it was or wasn't. I bought the media tie-in release of the novel, which had a great cover.


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